Romney vs. Perry: It's personal

It’s the worst-kept secret of the GOP presidential primary: Mitt Romney and Rick Perry have never liked each other very much.

And the past animosity could play out on the national scene in the coming weeks when Romney, the precarious front-runner, and Perry, who is rising in the polls, take the stage together for a series of fall debates.

Story Continued Below

The tension between the two goes back at least five years, tracing back to a 2006 blow-up when the two Republicans served together as governors. At the time, Romney, then the Republican Governors Association chairman, hired veteran media strategist Alex Castellanos to do work for the national group — a direct affront to Perry, since Castellanos was working for Carole Keeton Strayhorn, who was running as an independent against the Texas governor.

“There was a big blowup” between Romney and Perry over it, said one Republican familiar with the situation.

“It’s not like [Castellanos] was working for a Republican, he was working for an independent,” said the Texas Republican. “If that had been Rick Perry running the RGA, he’d have fired his ass and made sure he got no work anywhere. You’re trying to grow your ranks, not shrink your ranks.”

A source close to Romney who was familiar with the event said, “I think from [Romney’s] perspective, he felt he was doing what was right for the RGA.”

Some say the relationship never recovered.

The following year, Perry endorsed Rudy Giuliani over Romney in the presidential race, in which Castellanos was a Romney adviser. Not only did the Texan pick the New York City mayor over his former gubernatorial colleague, he went the extra step of jabbing at Romney in a book he wrote in 2008 about the Boy Scouts, suggesting the former Massachusetts governor had excluded Scouts who had wanted to volunteer for the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City because he disagreed with a Supreme Court decision allowing the group to ban gay Scoutmasters. (Salt Lake officials reportedly denied that anyone who wanted to pitch in was turned away).

Phil Musser, a Republican operative and former executive director of the Republican Governors Association under Romney, acknowledged the two have a history but insisted the reports of animus are being exaggerated and that their relationship has improved.